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A dying plane forced four planeswalkers to turn shared mistakes into a lasting oath.

Battle for Zendikar

Ulamog and Kozilek break free on Zendikar. Gideon, Jace, Nissa and Chandra answer by forming the Gatewatch, then risk the plane itself to draw both Eldrazi titans fully into reality and destroy them.

Why this story matters

The route in brief

Zendikar was never an empty prison. Nahiri, Sorin and Ugin trapped the Eldrazi there because its leylines and hedrons could hold beings that moved through the Blind Eternities. The plan protected other worlds by concentrating danger on one inhabited plane, then depended on guardians and promises that did not endure equally.

When Ulamog and Kozilek threatened the last resistance, the crisis united planeswalkers who had each contributed to the disaster or failed to answer it alone. Gideon could protect people but not stop a titan. Jace could design a trap but not hold it by himself. Nissa knew the plane’s living power, while Chandra supplied force that only mattered after the others made the impossible target finite.

The Gatewatch began before it had a headquarters, hierarchy or reputation. It began as an admission that the freedom to leave a plane could not excuse abandoning people who could not. Their oath did not erase earlier mistakes. It gave those mistakes a direction: run toward the next danger together and remain answerable for the result.

Read in order or choose a turning point

Story Chapters

  1. A prison becomes a world’s burden

    The ancient Eldrazi solution protected the Multiverse while requiring Zendikar to carry the danger indefinitely.

    Ugin understood that the visible Eldrazi titans were extensions of beings existing beyond ordinary planes. Destroying what appeared on one world might have consequences no one could calculate. With Sorin and Nahiri, he chose containment and used Zendikar’s leylines as the power behind a vast hedron network.

    Nahiri stayed to maintain the prison on her home plane. When it weakened, her call for help went unanswered and she repaired it alone. Much later, Nissa broke the remaining failsafe because she believed freed titans would leave Zendikar. Instead, Ulamog and Kozilek remained to feed, while their broods converted living regions into distorted waste.

    Responsibility for the disaster could not be assigned to one decision. Jace and Chandra had earlier helped open the Eye of Ugin, Nissa released the final restraint, and the ancient alliance had built a solution around promises that failed. Zendikar’s people paid for choices made by travellers who could always depart.

    Open dedicated chapter

  2. Sea Gate falls and rises

    Gideon and Jace joined Zendikar’s survivors, while Nissa restored the connection that allowed the plane to resist.

    Gideon returned to Ravnica seeking help after discovering that courage and invulnerability could not protect a world from a titan. Jace agreed to accompany him. They arrived too late to save Sea Gate from its first fall, but helped survivors escape and began connecting forces that had been fighting separate defeats.

    Nissa had lost contact with Zendikar’s soul as destruction spread. Guided toward the Khalni Heart, she restored that bond and recovered the ability to call on the plane’s elementals and leylines. The renewal made her essential to any plan using the hedrons, while also drawing the attention of Ob Nixilis.

    Zendikari forces retook Sea Gate with help from Gideon, Jace, Nissa, Kiora and commanders who had survived the earlier disaster. The victory was real but temporary. Ulamog approached the city, forcing the defenders to decide whether reclaimed ground was a symbol worth holding or another place from which civilians had to escape.

    Open dedicated chapter

  3. The hedron trap

    Jace and Nissa used the leylines to bind Ulamog while Gideon placed himself between the titan and the people maintaining the network.

    Jace studied the Eye of Ugin and the remaining hedrons, then proposed a trap that echoed the ancient prison on a smaller scale. Nissa would align the network with Zendikar’s leylines. Gideon would draw Ulamog into position and keep the battlefield from collapsing before the structure closed.

    The plan demanded different kinds of trust. Jace had to accept that Nissa understood a living system he could only model. Nissa had to direct the plane’s wounded power through a design associated with its long imprisonment. Gideon had to hold a line knowing that personal endurance did not make the people behind him invulnerable.

    For a moment, it worked. Ulamog was held inside the ring and Zendikar’s forces could strike a titan that had seemed beyond reach. The apparent victory also concentrated enough power for a hidden enemy to use. Every part of the trap depended on alignment, making one deliberate disruption capable of reversing it.

    Open dedicated chapter

  4. Ob Nixilis breaks the plan

    Ob Nixilis stole the network’s power, restored his spark and released a second titan before defeating the planeswalkers.

    Ob Nixilis followed Nissa to the Khalni Heart and understood what the hedron network could give him. His spark had been trapped on Zendikar long before, and the defenders’ concentrated mana offered a route back to the Multiverse. Their emergency was, to him, an opportunity to recover freedom and punish the plane.

    He broke the alignment, drew power into himself and reignited his spark. Ulamog escaped. Worse, Ob Nixilis summoned Kozilek from beneath Zendikar, turning a fragile containment battle into a confrontation with two titans. Kiora’s confidence and the army’s momentum collapsed under the change.

    Gideon, Jace and Nissa were captured and tortured after trying to oppose him. Chandra arrived from Regatha after reconsidering her decision to stay away, and her intervention freed them. The rescue did not restore the trap or the lost army. It gave four exhausted planeswalkers enough time to decide what they were willing to promise.

    Open dedicated chapter

  5. The Gatewatch takes its oath

    Gideon, Jace, Nissa and Chandra turned a temporary alliance into a commitment to face Multiversal threats together.

    The devastation around them made departure rational. Zendikar seemed close to death, the known plan had failed and Ob Nixilis had demonstrated how easily individual strengths could be isolated. None of the four could claim that another person’s mistake had created the crisis while their own choices remained clean.

    They took an oath to keep watch over the Multiverse and defend those facing threats larger than one world. Gideon supplied the language of service, but each planeswalker made the promise for a different reason. Jace needed a structure for responsibility, Nissa refused to abandon Zendikar and Chandra chose commitment without surrendering independence.

    The oath did not create instant harmony. Their methods and priorities still conflicted, and later events would expose serious failures. Its importance lay in making return an obligation. Planeswalking had always made escape possible; the Gatewatch defined heroism as choosing not to use that freedom when others had nowhere to go.

    Open dedicated chapter

  6. Zendikar’s last stand

    The defenders drew Ulamog and Kozilek fully into the plane, allowing Nissa to bind their essence and Chandra to burn it.

    Jace proposed using the leylines differently. Instead of rebuilding a prison, Nissa would pull the titans’ full presence into Zendikar and bind it there. Gideon, Chandra, Kiora and the surviving army would lure and delay them. The plan risked the plane itself because channelling beings of that scale could fracture what remained.

    Nissa joined the leylines and made the titans finite enough to confront. Chandra released fire through the structure, initially finding even her power insufficient. With Zendikar’s mana feeding the spell, she pushed beyond an ordinary act of pyromancy and burned Ulamog and Kozilek until their physical forms were destroyed.

    Zendikar survived, but victory did not make the decision simple. Ugin warned that no one understood the Eldrazi’s full purpose or the future cost of killing two beings older than worlds. The Gatewatch left with proof that cooperation could achieve the impossible—and with a precedent for acting before complete knowledge could ever be available.

    Open dedicated chapter

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